50 shades of intemperate spending

Lavish take-out orders, expensive cleaners, workers nickel-and-dimed out of their money, electrician friends being given sweetheart jobs, high water expenses – the state comptroller report into spending by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his official residence and private home burst onto the scene Tuesday afternoon like the 50 Shades of Gray of audits, with papers Wednesday morning breathlessly reporting on the sexless, cold, dry figures and openly expressing the desire to see the prime minister doing his best Ana Steele in cuffs impression.

It’s no surprise that one of the three papers sees the report in a different light than the rest. While Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz both lead with the suspicion of criminality found in the report, readers of Israel Hayom could come away thinking that the state comptroller found a little bit of extra spending, but nothing too serious, and the tabloid’s commentators go out of their way to point an accusatory finger at pretty much everybody but Netanyahu.

But we’ll get to them in a minute.

Haaretz and Yedioth are not about to cut the prime minister any slack. The top of Haaretz leads off with the criminal suspicions surrounding the Likud apparatchik employed by the Netanyahus as an electrician, and goes from there into a volley of analyses/opinions giving the prime minister the business.

Yedioth doesn’t go any easier, fillings its front page with allegation after allegation against the prime minister detailed in the report, buffeted by jeremiads against Netanyahu from a slew of writers.

The tabloid’s Nahum Barnea is one of them, grading the prime minister a “0 on behavior,” though not law-abidingness.

“There are no shocking scandals in the report, no massive thefts or large frauds. It’s true that the comptroller points out the possibility of criminal violations in a number of cases, including the famous electrician and the even more famous bottles. It’s true that he passed the material to the state’s attorney, and the state attorney opened a case, but it’s best not to exaggerate: What was revealed in the report points out bankrupt, deceptive behavior, but not necessarily behavior that warrants criminal charges,” he writes.

Opinionator Tova Tzimuki, though, takes the opposite view, zooming out at the larger picture of the Netanyahus’ misdeeds and calling on the attorney general to open a case immediately even if all the stuff in the report was relatively small change.

“We aren’t just talking about a lack of sensitivity toward the public coffers or even systematic ‘returns,’ but something more troubling: violations of fraud and loss of public trust. What is painted is a worrying picture: a public servant trying to use public assets to grow his own bank account and to take care of the needs of his family,” she writes. “Don’t forget that the cases already against him were closed not for lack of guilt, but for lack of evidence to prove that the Netanyahus knowingly committed a crime.”

While Haaretz loses no love for Netanyahu, their coverage is also highly critical of the comptroller’s report — which they intimate does not go far enough — estimating that Netanyahu will be spanked but nothing worse. Yossi Verter, for instance, opines that the report doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.

“Ultimately all it does is recount, in dry language and figures with lots of zeroes, what anyone with even minimal knowledge of this country over the last six years already knows: Netanyahu and his wife are embodiments of hedonism, covetousness, stinginess and extravagance with public funds,” he writes.

Meanwhile, Gidi Weitz calls Netanyahu the Teflon prime minister, doubting anything will do him much damage and Amir Oren, who first reported on the “bottlegate” scandal that got the whole Netanyahu expense suspicions train rolling last month, scathingly skewers Comptroller Yosef Shapira’s highfalutin language and lack of actionable findings by imagining what the 10 commandments would look like if he were God:

“Draft: Thou shalt not commit adultery. Final version: The report finds that in the fiscal year 3029 to 5463, there occurred pairings outside the constricts of marriage from time to time. This is regrettable and the ability of males and females to violate mutual vows should be prevented for the safeguarding of trust.”

Yosef Shapira is not God, and if Israel Hayom is to be believed, he’s little more than a puppet of Israel’s lefty media, controlled by Yedioth publisher Arnon Mozes himself.

The paper plays up Netanyahu’s and Likud’s claims of innocence and in some places belittles the report as a minor blip.

The paper’s Dror Eydar lets out a primal scream on behalf of the Netanyahu camp, opining harshly that the real crime isn’t the Netanyahu’s spending or misuse of public funds, but the brainwashing of the Israeli people by Mozes and his leftist friends.

“An entire country is going crazy as a herd of journalists scream ‘Netanyahu is corrupt.’ No, you are the real ones who are corrupt,” he writes. “You, who were chosen by nobody, but write on who is fit to lead; who despise the other Israel; who defend disqualified Israel Prize judge Ariel Hirschfeld, despite the fact that judges have been disqualified for years for political reasons; that treat Eitan Cabel as a moral touchstone, even after he paid his brother tens of thousands of shekels through a headquarters of nothing; who ignore Raviv Druckers ties to the Fund to Destroy Israel, which donates millions to an NGO he heads; who accept the hegemony of Amnon Abramovitch over public broadcasting without hearing an opposing opinion – you are corrupt.”

The paper isn’t a total Netanyahu lovefest though, reporting faithfully on the various damning parts of the report and with analyst Mordechai Gilat even writing that the small amounts dealt with aren’t the point, since they highlight a larger problem.

The paper even delves into parts of the report largely ignored by others, like the accounting of opulent spending by former president Shimon Peres. Hence, Motti Tuchfeld wonders why the obsession with Netanyahu when Peres lived even higher on the hog.

“Particularly striking is the fact that the report is filled with juicy details about Netanyahu’s dressing habits, cleaning, ordering food, water consumption and employment of the electrician, but the corresponding report, which deals with President’s Residence, is dry, free of interesting details, and without proper answers to the obvious question of how the budget has risen 20 percent annually up to NIS 60 million a year. With such an amazing figure, and with all due respect to the comptroller, expenses of Netanyahu’s residence look like peanuts compared to the president’s budget. It is interesting that this is not expressed in any report,” he writes.